A College Student talks Life, rather his version of it…

Pran : The Definition of a Villain

Two days ago, I was idly surfing through the multitude of channels brought to our homes, thanks to cable TV when a news caught my eyes. “Pran is no more”.

Pran.

Meaning life in Hindi, this made no logical sense, but somewhere in the thickets of my memory, the name registered.

Pran – The Eternal Villain of Bollywood.

I never knew Pran. By the time I started watching Hindi movies Pran Sahib had gone into near-retirement. But whether you watched him on screen, if you just missed his pinnacle, or if you’ve never even heard of him, you will have heard his iconic one liner…

“Barkhudar…”

But in retrospection, I may have missed a master. Pran played the lead role in some his first movies, but later he started playing the villain, a role that would eventually make him famous. His villainous characters were so well plotted and executed to pin-point perfection that a generation later, parents had qualms about naming their children Pran, because the name Pran had become synonymous with villain in Bollywood. That has to be the most striking achievement in his life. He made you hate him. And that is what a villain is supposed to do.

So, to the eternal maestro of Indian cinema, Pran…May your soul rest in peace. And we will cherish those memories, those characters that you left behind…Memories to last a lifetime…